Welcome to GermanEnglishWords.com.
This is a dictionary of some German words used in the English language (Germanisms),
each with a literal or German meaning, English definition and actual
sample sentence(s) from literature and the Internet.

Some German words like kindergarten
are so Anglicized that they are now considered English words borrowed
from German. Such words are called loan words or loanwords.
Loan word itself is a literal translation of the German Lehnwort,
making it a loan translation, loan translation
itself being a loan translation of Lehnübersetzung. Loan
translations are also called calques.

Other German words like Waldsterben
are still considered foreign words used in English and
often describe a particular technical term. Foreign words are usually
italicized.

The entries in this online dictionary may sometimes have
alternate definitions which are not given here.

I include mostly only entries which are derived from Modern
German, although some come to English through Yiddish,
in which case the entries are clearly so designated. I include Yiddish
words if they are fairly close in meaning to their Modern German
cognates.

Yiddish is a High German language written in Hebrew characters
that is spoken by Jews and descendants of Jews of central and eastern
European origin. Its grammar and much of its vocabulary are Germanic,
but it has also borrowed many words from other languages such as Hebrew
and Slavic. Yiddish became a separate language between the 9th and 12th
centuries, so one cannot say it developed from Modern German, but rather
it arose about the same time Old High German gave way to Middle High
German. In other words Yiddish is a Germanic language in its own right
just as for example German, English, Dutch and Swedish are. The word Yiddish
comes from the Yiddish word yidish, which is short for yidish
daytsh "Jewish German" [< Middle High German jüdisch
diutsch "Jewish German"].

Another source of German words in the English language are the Pennsylvania
Dutch, who are comprised of several groups of German emigrants who came
from the lower Rhine provinces, Bavaria, and Saxony. They were not from
the Netherlands as one might conclude from the name Pennsylvania
Dutch; the Dutch part of the term is related to deutsch,
which is German for "German".

Since 1869 many people have preferred the term Pennsylvania
German.
According to Microsoft Encarta 2000 the Pennsylvania Dutch started
arriving in 1863. However Merriam
Webster says they arrived in the 1700s and that the term Pennsylvania
Dutch entered the English language around 1824. And according to h2g2:
"The first permanent settlement of Germans in America was founded
in 1683, just outside Philadelphia." So the date given in Encarta
is probably a typo.
Of course Dutch and deutsch are etymologically related
[English Dutch < Middle English Ducch, Duch, Dutch
duits, duitsch < Middle Dutch dutsch, duutsch, Old
High German diutisc "popular, vernacular (language)",
related to Old English theodisc "speech"]; [German deutsch
< Middle High German diutisch, diutsch, tiutsch, tiusch <
Old High German diutisc].
In addition to Pennsylvania Dutch another example of Dutch
used to mean "German" is in David Copperfield (1849), an Entwicklungsroman by
Charles Dickens: "Miss Betsey, looking around the room, slowly and
inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a
Saracen's head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother."
Then there is the term Dutch cheese, which can refer either to
a cheese similar to Edam (therefore no doubt from the Netherlands), or
to cottage cheese (schmierkase), in
which case it is definitely Pennsylvania German.

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